Discursive Political Science Meets South Park

Th e article aims to present the specific features of political discourse analysis (also called ’discursive political science’ in the Hungarian academic milieu) as a theoretical approach and investigational frame on the one hand, and to unpick the political discourses centered on South Park, a scandalous TV show broadcasted by Comedy Central channel on the other. That is, by confronting a scientific way of understanding a somewhat strange, as/or rather untypical empirical case the paper both intends to highlight the main characteristics of an aspect and method perhaps less known in the inland public and to offer a discursive case study. In the first part of the paper the proper ’politicality’ of the subject has been reflected according to five feasible criteria (personal-, thematic-, structural-positional-, genre-, interpretational-). In addition, the second part of the study reviews and analyses the very (discursive) acts of politicking and politicization in connection with the show focusing on the US publicity, especially on the discourse strategies used by several influential conservative pundits.